The Email Standards Project

While I have not been designing a great deal of HTML emails lately, I have been periodically checking the status of the email-standards project. I am happy to announce that the project has been launched and we now have a great resource for standardization of email design and development practices. As listed within the “what can you do” section of the site, I am using my extremely small portion of the Internet to raise awareness for this project.

the project takes a two prong approach to creating standards for HTML email. The first is to educate designers about the importance of standards in email design. Secondly is to provide assistance to the email client providers to create a compliant piece of software. This is no easy task, and without the support of the community this project may fall behind the pressures of bureaucracy faced by the software developers creating our favorite email applications.

Any designer who has been commissioned to create a HTML email for a client has undoubtly run into the issues this project hopes to resolve. This is especially true since the unveiling of Office 2007 and the infamous Word based Outlook rendering engine. Which has according to some web professionals “Thrown HTML emails back into the dark ages of tables and spacer .gifs.” (Shudders)

I am whole heartedly suggesting that every web professional visit the site to find out more and spread the word!